John Bailey – The Kingfisher Diaries
June 21st 2010
Don't Be Afraid To Bait
I had a guy come to me in the tackle shop a few days ago who was totally stumped. He was fishing Lily Lake and though he could see carp, tench, bream and decent roach all around he wasn't really catching. It seems that he was fishing boilies in a fairly textbook way but was only registering the odd bite or so. He found it puzzling.
I guess there are two ways to approach Lily Lake. You wither fish carp techniques traditionally and you certainly will pick fish up in numbers under certain conditions.
Or, second, you really pile in the bait and build up the swim. It doesn't really matter if you attract a load of silver fish because the tench, bream and carp are bound to follow out of curiosity. Get the swim really bubbling and the bigger fish will move in.
In the shop, we've got several types of ground bait that mix up well with hemp, seed and sweetcorn. I like to mix the ground bait up fairly sloppy so that it sinks very slowly throughout the water creating a 3D cloud effect throughout the water column. If you mix your bait too tight, it simply goes down to the bottom like a stone where it slowly breaks up. Good for certain conditions but not so good for the warmer summer months when the fish are very active in the upper layers of the water.
And you don't have to fish too far out so don't worry about distance unduly. Providing you're quiet, you can get the fish in close.
There's no doubt that this second approach works really well on heavily-stocked waters like Lily and Lobster. Okay, you've got to splash the cash a bit and you probably won't achieve a session to remember without laying out a few quid on bait but, as our old friend Bond says, you're not here for a haircut!